Kick Back w-1

by Garry Disher

  More irritation. ‘That’s idiotic’

  ‘Not if we’re quick and look legitimate from the outside.’

  Hobba was looking interested. He turned to Anna. ‘What kind of safe is it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Just a safe.’

  ‘It’s a little Chubb,’ Wyatt said.

  That made her sit up. She put her head on one side, concentrating on his face. ‘The waiting room,’ she said, nodding slowly. ‘This afternoon.’

  Wyatt held her stare. ‘We’ll tie everyone up,’ he said. ‘If you’re one of the victims, you won’t be suspected.’

  ‘What about clients? What if I have to go out? I need to know roughly when you’ll do it.’

  Wyatt waited. Finally he said, ‘All right. Cancel your late afternoon clients. If Finn has a client with him, too bad. We’ll hit at four-fifteen. Will you all be there?’

  She nodded. ‘Finn goes out for coffee at three-thirty, but he only stays away ten minutes.’

  ‘Four-fifteen?’ Pedersen said. ‘Are you mad?’

  Wyatt turned to him. ‘Later. Okay?’

  ‘Well, Jesus.’

  Anna was smiling, going over the idea in her mind. ‘Finn will think he’s been hit by someone he does business with. I like it.’ The smile faded. ‘But what about my share? There I am, tied up, while you lot disappear.’

  Hobba and Pedersen seemed to grow alert at that. Wyatt looked at them warningly. He turned to the woman again. ‘You’re the finger,’ he said. ‘You can put all three of us away. We won’t rip you off. I’ll pay you myself on Saturday.’

  She gave him another complicated look. He saw the motion in her throat as she swallowed. ‘How will you get in and out without attracting attention?’

  When Wyatt didn’t reply she frowned and looked round at the others. Finally Hobba answered her. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘it’s best if you don’t know. That helps protect you, and you’ll behave more convincingly when the time comes.’

  ‘Oh great. Shall I scream when the time comes?’

  Wyatt handed her a pen and a scrap of paper. ‘Give me your address and phone number.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling this is no longer my job?’ she said.

  They ignored her, watching her write. Then Wyatt pocketed the note and crossed to the door and stood there, facing her, his hand on the door knob. She got up and walked towards him, half amused, half angry.

  ‘Don’t try to contact us,’ he said, ‘and we won’t contact you, unless there’s a hitch. If all goes well I’ll let you know on Saturday where to find me.’

  Her eyes were half closed. ‘Won’t you be here?’

  She waited. When Wyatt didn’t reply, she gestured irritably and left the room.

  ****

  Twelve

  When she was gone Hobba raised an eyebrow and said, ‘So, Wyatt, what do you reckon?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About what?’ Hobba threw up his arms. ‘Her. Anna. I like your chances there, pal.’

  Wyatt watched Hobba coldly. He refused to be drawn, had no time for it, couldn’t understand how anyone lacked focus when they had a job on. Finally Hobba gave a self-conscious shrug and said, ‘Okay, how do you see the job?’

  ‘We’ll use a van, something that won’t look out of place. We drive up, go in as tradesmen, lock the doors, disarm the phones, crack the safe. Max, Chubbs are easy, right?’

  ‘Some of them,’ Pedersen said. He’d been playing with the zip on his japara. ‘A van,’ he said, ‘some sort of disguise. Going to cost a fair bit. Guns too?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wyatt said. ‘But no shooting.’

  ‘I got a gun,’ Hobba said. ‘Wyatt, you got guns.’

  Wyatt shook his head. ‘I’ve never used my own on a job and I’m not going to start now. We get new ones.’

  Wyatt waited, watching him. Hobba liked to play devil’s advocate. It was how they ironed out the wrinkles. ‘Where from?’ Hobba said. ‘They put Payne away last week for shipping M16s to Fiji, and I wouldn’t want to be caught with something that fell off the back of a truck in the saloon bar of the Kings Head.’

  ‘Max, what have you heard? Who else is supplying?’

  Pedersen tugged back and forth on his zip again, thinking. Eventually he said, ‘There’s this guy near Burnley Station. Somebody Flood.’

  Wyatt nodded. He knew of Flood.

  Hobba got to his feet and stretched, getting the kinks out of his massive back. He lit a cigarette and began to circle the small area between the bed and the door to the corridor. ‘What with?’ he said. ‘I haven’t got any spare cash. Max here hasn’t.’

  Wyatt had withdrawn his final cache that afternoon. It would do for the guns and incidentals and his hotel bill, but that was about it. He said, ‘I’ll take care of the guns.’

  Hobba looked at him shrewdly but said nothing. Pedersen removed his japara at last. The fawn shirt under it blended with his sandy colouring, making his features even less distinct. He folded the japara over his knee and said, ‘Okay, you buy the guns. But where do we get the cash for a van and the other stuff? I mean, this is pretty central to the whole deal.’

  ‘We bankroll it,’ Wyatt said. ‘Pull a couple of small jobs.’

  Hobba sat down again, his bulk disturbing the surface of the bed. ‘Ivan Younger is good for any of the stuff we need.’

  Wyatt grinned. ‘Yeah, well that’s a long story.’ He told them about Sugarfoot and Ivan and the dead housekeeper.

  ‘Was that you?’ Pedersen said, amazed. He looked troubled, as if Wyatt had come down in the world. ‘Ivan Younger’s someone you buy from. He’s not someone you work for.’

  Hobba began to wheeze like an accordion. He was laughing. ‘You got out of it lucky. Young Sugar is going to find himself in a shallow grave one day.’

  We could go on like this all night, Wyatt thought. He said, ‘So we can’t use the Youngers. Who else is there?’

  He knew the answers to most of these questions, but the scene changed quickly, so it was important to double check. Hobba said, ‘Eddie Loman.’

  ‘Eddie Loman’s good,’ Wyatt said. ‘You go and see him in the morning and order a van.’

  ‘He won’t come through unless we pay him up front.’

  ‘The way to deal with the Eddie Lomans of this world is let them see some cash, say a thousand. He’ll come through then.’

  ‘A thousand? I bloody haven’t got a thousand.’

  Silently Wyatt pulled out his wallet and counted out one thousand dollars. ‘Give him this. I’ll see about the guns. Meanwhile, I want a stake-out on the target over the next few days. Max, you’ll take the first shift tomorrow.’

  Pedersen nodded. He seemed pleased to be working again.

  Hobba was still looking for hitches. ‘We can’t use our cars for the stake-out. We’ll have to use rentals. That means fake ID.’

  Wyatt opened his wallet. ‘This is my passport photo. You get yours taken tonight, use one of those machines, and ask Loman to fix us up with ID. As for the bankroll, there’s one scam I know of, but it won’t bring in enough cash. We need a second scam.’

  A slow, wide smile formed on Hobba’s face. ‘Ivan Younger runs a couple of call-girls over in Fitzroy. How would you like to get back the five thousand he owes you?’

  ****

  Thirteen

  Later, when he was alone, Wyatt heard the knock, two soft, confident raps. He opened the door and Anna Reid was there, her low voice saying, ‘I waited in the lobby. I saw them leave.’

  She regarded him calmly, her hands resting in the deep pockets of her jacket. Wyatt stared at her, then stepped back wordlessly to let her in.

  At the centre of the room she removed the jacket and looked for somewhere to put it. She didn’t speak. No explanations or justifications, no ‘Are you surprised?’ or the other openings he expected.

  But as she stepped by him to drape the jacket on a chair, her arm brushed against him. He tensed. In the silence she said, ‘Two things. First, I’ve be
en stealing from my trust account.’

  He nodded.

  ‘To repay a bookmaker,’ she said. ‘I have to put the money back before I get found out. Second, I could take some polaroid photos of the layout and the alarm system if that would be a help.’

  Wyatt ran through the possibilities. Perhaps she wanted him to trust her. Or she wanted to know if she could trust him. Or it was all a game to her. ‘Photos would be useful,’ he said. ‘Take them tomorrow. I’ll be in touch.’

  She looked at him ironically. ‘You’ll be in touch.’

  He nodded, refusing to smile. ‘About the money you owe,’ he said. ‘You just decided you’d ask Max to rob a safe for you.’

  ‘It wasn’t quite as blatant as that. I was explaining his parole provisions one day, and he told me I was wasting my time. He said he expected to be back in jail again sooner or later.’

  ‘That got your mind working.’

  She smiled. ‘I didn’t say anything for a few days. He didn’t seem like an idiot, but I couldn’t be sure, so I sort of circled around the topic to see how he’d respond.’

  ‘What did he say when you finally mentioned it?’

  She shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem surprised. I was just another crook; this was just another job.’

  They hadn’t wasted time with small talk or hedging, and now they were silent. But Wyatt wanted to know more. After a while he said, ‘How come you’re Finn’s partner?’

  ‘He knew my father in Brisbane. When I came down here he took me on.’

  She looked, briefly troubled, at his face, and he understood that she was unhappy. Beauty attracts the bad offers, he thought, and she’s accepted some of them. He said suddenly, ‘Finn expected you to go to bed with him.’

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, raising her eyebrows. She went serious again, wrapping her arms around her chest. ‘At first I didn’t mind. I was young, he gave me a start, he can be very compelling. Later on we stopped but he still looks at me like it’s there whenever he wants it.’

  Wyatt was silent, waiting for her to say more. She cocked her head. ‘He lost a lot of money in the ‘87 stock market crash. After a while I realised he’d gone crooked. He started doing the planning kickbacks, and there were lots of little things- for example, every month he has the place swept for wiretaps and bugs. He tells us it’s Telecom doing maintenance.’

  ‘How did you know about Friday’s drop?’

  ‘He’s always very careful, but I overhear bits and pieces and I fill in the gaps. Some of his planning appeal work is genuine, but a lot of it’s rigged-straw objectors, inflated settlements, all earning him huge kickbacks. When something big goes through, he likes to brag.’

  ‘Using it as a come-on,’ Wyatt said.

  Her eyes were large and when she smiled they seemed to lengthen and tilt upwards. She reached forward and brushed his chest almost as if she hadn’t done it. ‘I was thinking about you downstairs. Most people who aren’t straight eventually become wary and secretive. I think with you it was the other way around.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So let’s hope it means you’re less likely to make mistakes.’

  Usually when they started analysing him, understanding him, it was time to get out. But there were gaps in this job and he might learn something. Besides, she made him feel alive and well. Her knuckles brushed his chest again and he didn’t flinch. ‘You can afford to pick and choose your jobs,’ she said.

  If he’d known her better he might have told her about scraping the bottom of the barrel with people like the Youngers. But he felt his luck had changed now; the Youngers were irrelevant. ‘I like working through the details,’ he said.

  ‘That’s obvious. Just now, when everyone was here, you seemed to be interested only in the job. Not them, not me.’

  ‘I keep the distractions till later.’

  ‘Uh huh,’ she said, nodding ironically.

  He waited to see what she would do.

  What she did was touch his chest on the way out and say, ‘I can do more than just take polaroids of the layout.’

  ****

  Fourteen

  Monday night was Sugarfoot Younger’s night for prowling the bars and dance floors of Club H in King Street, keeping an eye on the patrons, thumping heads that got out of line. Ivan had hard cash invested in Club H. Sugarfoot didn’t know if Club H was a Bauer operation or not. All he knew was, he hated the powder-blue tux, and the women were slags. You’d think as bouncer he’d be in a position to grab some of the action, but he hadn’t scored once. All the chicks seemed to come from Mount Waverley and wanted to know how come he drove an old car.

  At eleven o’clock he popped his knuckles and stepped out for some fresh air. Being a Monday night, and mid-winter, there wasn’t much action in King Street. Not like the time he worked a Saturday night shift: guys openly dealing, chicks crying rape, torn scalps, cops, ambulances, a couple of bouncers charged with assault. Do this full time? Fifteen bucks an hour? Forget it.

  He was more and more determined to turn pro. Seeing Bauer in action this afternoon had left him feeling unsettled and excited. Bauer had the right idea.

  Monday night bouncer? Collector of small debts? No input into planning? Fuck that. One swift, clean, impressive hit, that’s all he’d need.

  He finished work at one o’clock. By one-thirty he was sitting in the Customline in the car park of the Housing Commission flats in Racecourse Road. Hobba lived on the eighth floor, but Sugarfoot didn’t go up to check it out. Too many ethnics about. Leave your car unattended and they’d strip it. Look twice at them and they’d knife you.

  Sugarfoot started the Customline and drove out of the car park and across to a long, narrow street in Brunswick. He looked sourly at the houses. They were small workers’ bungalows, but the street was well on the way to becoming yuppie heaven. Already there were brass numerals and restored verandahs. Pedersen’s weatherboard was set amid tidy garden beds and gravel paths. Gloomy fruit trees dominated the back yard.

  Sugarfoot sat for a while. There was no sign of life, but he didn’t expect there to be. If Hobba and Pedersen did have something planned with Wyatt, and if it hadn’t happened yet, their daytime movements might be the key. Meanwhile, finding out where they lived was all part of the groundwork.

  Sugarfoot drove home and set the alarm for eight o’clock. Fucking terrible hour but he was treating Tuesday as the first day of the rest of his life.

  ****

  Fifteen

  Before going for the guns on Tuesday morning, Wyatt checked out of the Gatehouse. He never spent more than one night in a place when he was setting up a job. He checked into a cheap hotel nearby, put his remaining cash in a money belt around his waist, and entered the Underground at Parliament Station. He caught a train that went through Burnley. Out of habit he sat at the end of the carriage, where he had a clear view of the aisle and the entry and connecting doors. He kept his hand on the knife in his pocket. That was habit, too. But knives were useful. People respected the swift threat of a blade where a gun or a raised fist simply flustered them.

  The carriage was almost empty. Two men, one elderly, the other about forty, sat near the middle doors. Three middle-aged women were going home with their shopping. Wyatt listened to them comparing the hairdressing salons in Myer and David Jones. Two young Vietnamese men, quick and glittering, sat at the far end of the carriage. Across from Wyatt was an overweight teenage mother wearing stretch jeans and scuffed moccasins. She had trouble keeping still, and shouted rather than spoke endearments to a squawling child in a pusher. There was graffiti on the windows, the script bold and mocking.

  He got off at Burnley Station and stood at the timetable board watching others get off, watching for lingerers. He saw the young mother light a cigarette and shake the pusher. She joined a huddle of people at the exit gate, people who could easily be her parents, siblings, neighbours. They disappeared into the flat, exhausted streets. Sour poverty and contention and mindless pride, Wyatt thought.
He’d grown up in a suburb like this. Everyone had talked solidarity, but he’d never seen it.

  Other trains came in and pulled out again. He left the station and walked to Cowper Road, a narrow street of sodden workers’ cottages and grimy workshops. Cars heaved across small craters in the road surface, throwing up gouts of oily water.

  Number twenty-nine was a corrugated-iron shed about thirty metres deep. A sign above the door said Burnley Metal Fabricators. On a smaller sign was the word ‘office’ and an arrow that pointed left to a turn-of-the-century cottage which shared a wall with the shed.

  Apart from the patchy lawn and a chained Alsatian on the verandah, there was no sign of life at the cottage. The curtains were imitation lace. Steel bars secured the windows. Keeping a wary eye on the Alsatian, Wyatt mounted the steps to the door. The dog opened and closed an eye and yawned squeakily. Its tail flapped. Wyatt pressed the buzzer.

  A voice crackled on the intercom. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Flood?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I rang you last night,’ Wyatt said.

  He heard shuffling footsteps behind the door and sensed an eye at the peephole. Two locks were opened. The door swung back. Flood, a small, gloomy man dressed in overalls, said nothing but turned and shuffled back into the house. The air was hot and stale and smelt of toast and pipe smoke. Wyatt followed Flood through a poky sitting-room where gas flames flickered in an ancient heater, to a kitchen at the back of the house. The ceramic sink was chipped and yellowed. Beaten fruit-tin lids had been nailed over cracks in the linoleum. A nervy black cat eyed Wyatt from a wooden kitchen dresser.

  ‘I asked around,’ Flood said. ‘The word is, you’re okay.’

  Wyatt said nothing.

  Flood shrugged. He had a staved-in face. Whisker tufts grew high on his cheeks as if he shaved without a mirror. A thin brown rime coated his lips. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said. He sat down. There was another chair but Wyatt remained standing. ‘What are you after?’